March 10, 2013

The stated claim by the hospital chain Cancer Treatment Centers of America that an above-average percentage of its patients are still alive after six months, one year, and longer has been disputed by nine cancer and medical statistic experts who reviewed CTCA's survival numbers and found that its patients were not typical or comparable to the norm. They said the company routinely rejects patients who are statistically more likely to die, such as the elderly and those with little or no insurance or on Medicaid, and excludes those who came to CTCA with advanced cancers from its calculation of patient outcomes. And CTCA has only treated 50,000 patients since 1988; some cancer centers treat over 100,000 per year. The result, said one biostatistician, "is a huge bias" in CTCA's favor.